


Extinguished

by JustAPLant



Category: Zombies Run!
Genre: Don't want to include spoilers in tags, Enough angst for the ages, Stay away if you aren't caught up, s5ep20, some unpleasant descriptions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-27
Updated: 2016-07-27
Packaged: 2018-07-27 01:34:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7598296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustAPLant/pseuds/JustAPLant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A spiritual sequel to One Lit Candle. Spoilers for Zombies, Run! season 5 episode 20.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Extinguished

**Author's Note:**

> I was going to create a big fic with loads of chapters of different conversations Sam and Five have related to death, but then I realized that they wouldn't necessarily fit together thematically.This was going to be the last chapter of that work. I wanted to release something before the end of the Season 5 hiatus, so I wrote this out over the course of a few days. I'll probably still work on the other ideas I had and publish them too, it just won't be at the same time. 
> 
> This fic is a smidgen graphic, but if you've run s5ep20, you know what you came for.

You knew from the instant its teeth sank in that it was over. You watched as a dribble of blood fell to the ground and you knew there was no chance. All the same, you ran anyway.

The symptoms are familiar to you. You’re waiting for the signs, the confirmation that you’re going to die. It’s supposed to be gradual. It starts with the tickle, and once you’ve got that, there’s no mistaking it. What you receive is not a tickle. There’s a sudden aching pulse in your brain worse than any migraine you’ve ever known. For a moment, time itself seems to be warped. It slows down, and you wonder if this is where life is supposed to flash before your eyes, but then it begins to speed up again, and the voices in your ear sound twisted and wrong.

Suddenly, your lungs are fire. Your throat is burning, screaming. You forget how to inhale. Mucus fills the back of your mouth, and you begin to cough. It’s the cough. That famous, unstoppable cough that seals the death certificate. The force of it brings you to your knees. Your vision of the world blurs as tears involuntarily stream down your face. If you could, you would scream. Pain is spreading down into your gut, your chest. One cough goes too deep, and suddenly you’re heaving up bile. There’s a lingering sting on your lips that tells you it might have been stomach acid.

It feels like blood is writhing in your veins. You can hear somebody telling you to keep moving, but when you push to stand up, your legs don’t move right. You try to flex your fingers, but they look like they’re twitching like dying insects. The fluid you threw up is curdling and spreading all over the ground. The world seems to be tinted scarlet. Maybe you’re already seeing things. Maybe your sanity is already gone.

“I _can’t_ watch this happen, Five!”

 _Sam_. His voice, horrified, suddenly rings clearly in your ear. Strangely, you’re glad to hear it. Through your choking breaths, you try to speak to him, struggling to hear your own crackling voice over the ones you can hear in your head. It doesn’t sound like you anymore.

 

“S…So-rry…..Sa- aaaaaam.”

You try to say more. You’ve wondered about what you would say when this day came, and now you need to say it, but your tongue doesn’t seem to be cooperating. It lolls out of your mouth, and you distantly feel spittle dribbling down your chin, like you’ve come back from a tooth filling at the dentist.

You’re dying. The panicked ghost of Moonchild in your reeling brain confirms it. She feels like she’s on the edge of a precipice about to slip away, like on the crumbling side of a skyscraper, clinging on to you but about to fall. It feels familiar. _I’ll race you_.

You’re dying. Will you see your lost friends? Your family? Or… maybe you won’t. Your brain is fading away into the unknown. You can’t think straight anymore. You’re fading. Maybe this is the end. There might not be anything after you die. The thought is horrifying.

The pain no longer feels like fire. Or maybe it does. It’s just cold fire now. Ice fire.

From somewhere inside, you remember that you are dangerous. You should be hidden, locked away, where you can’t hurt. You can’t move, so someone else will have to do it. They’ll at least have a gun.

Sam is still there. You can hear him, but he sounds like he’s half a world away. He’s crying, pleading. The words are too difficult to understand, and you aren’t sure whom he’s begging with. For a moment, you can see his face before you. Sam. Sam Yao. You had so much left to say. The pain in your chest throbs.

There’s a terrible rushing noise around you, enveloping you, and you still feel the pain, but it seems to be fading, or maybe you’re just drifting farther away. You can’t move, but you feel like you are.

You shut your eyes. _Just let it be over,_ you think. _Let it be quick, and let it be over._

 

 

The sobs of Sam Yao become impossible to hear as a roar of mindless, unending hunger overpowers them.


End file.
